Wednesday, 18 February 2009

Spring '09 Colors

Spring 2009: The New Pastels

Pantone, the international color authority, recently announced its color of the year and re-released its color palette for the spring 2009 RTW shows, which it presented last winter. WWD.com posted the palette, but because they’re meanies, the article was for subscribers only. Fortunately, the folks at COLOURlovers recreated it. And now Contrast presents the New Pastels:

Other than the fact that this palette is vaguely reminiscent of medical dressing gowns or sanitary napkin wrappers, the reason I detest this palette so much is that it’s completely unnatural.. Mimosa (on the lower right corner) is, according to Pantone, the color of 2009 (who called that two weeks ago? Woot!). It’s a perfectly elegant color and, unlike the rest of the palette, can be found in nature. Meanwhile, the other colors, like Salmon Rose and Lucite Green, are grey, dull, and muddy variations of much nicer pastels.

It’s not like I think that everything we wear should be made with natural dyes. It’s just that these colors are supposed to represent the optimism of spring in light of the recession/ depression, but all I see is a vision of a very muddy, artificial, and dystopian future. These colors do not say spring to me.

And it’s not like these colors are new. Mimosa was quite popular this season. Bright Lapis and Dark Citron were popular last year and, like zombies or a staph infection, they just won’t go away.

So what do you think? Do you, like me, think the New Pastels are a disaster? Or do you think they’re perfectly lovely and, what’s more, wearable?

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